The echo chamber is overstated: The moderating effect of political

interest and diverse media

Dr. Elizabeth Duboisa* and Dr. Grant Blankb

a
Department of Communication, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada –
elizabeth.dubois@uottawa.ca

b
Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom –
grant.blank@oii.ox.ac.uk
* Corresponding author:
55 Laurier Ave. East, Room 11-156,
Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5;
613-562-5800 (1478)

This work was supported by Google as part of the Quello Search Project.

Word count: 7886

1
The echo chamber is overstated: The moderating effect of political
interest and diverse media

Abstract: In a high-choice media environment there are fears that individuals will select
media and content that reinforce their existing beliefs and lead to segregation based on
interest and/or partisanship. This could lead to partisan echo chambers among those who
are politically interested and could contribute to a growing gap in knowledge between
those who are politically interested and those who are not. However, the high-choice
environment also allows individuals, including those who are politically interested, to
consume a wide variety of media which could lead them to more diverse content and
perspectives. This study examines the relationship between political interest as well as
media diversity and being caught in an echo chamber (measured by five different
variables). Using a nationally representative survey of adult Internet users in the United
Kingdom (N = 2,000), we find that those who are interested in politics and those with
diverse media diets tend to avoid echo chambers. This work challenges the impact of
echo chambers and tempers fears of partisan segregation since only a small segment of
the population are likely to find themselves in an echo chamber. We argue that single
media studies and studies which use narrow definitions and measurements of being in an
echo chamber are flawed because they do not test the theory in the realistic context of a
multiple media environment.

Keywords: echo chamber; high-choice media environment; political

interest; media diversity; survey

2
Introduction

The idea of an “echo chamber” in politics is a metaphorical way to describe a situation

where only certain ideas, information and beliefs are shared (Jamieson & Cappella,

2008; Sunstein, 2009). People inside this setting will only encounter things they already

agree with. Without free movement of ideas and information people inside the echo

chamber will believe that this is all there is. Under these circumstances anyone who

disagrees is misinformed at best and wilfully ignorant at worst. Through opportunities

to select information and communities which support existing beliefs as well as through

algorithmic personalization, some worry that the Internet may make it easier for citizens

to find themselves in an echo chamber. Some fear that segregation by interest or opinion

will exacerbate the gap between those who are informed about politics and those who

are not, increase political polarization which will reinforce political divides, and

threaten democracies by limiting political information and discussions (Ksiazek,

Malthouse & Webster, 2010; Prior, 2007; Sunstein, 2009).

The Internet creates a high-choice media environment, where individuals may

access news and political information from a diverse array of media and sources (Van

Aelst et al., 2017).1 Since people can select their information sources the Internet may

foster an environment where echo chambers are more common and dangerous. Unlike

in low-choice environments, today individuals may access news and political

information from social media, search, online and offline versions of newspapers,

television broadcasts, radio, and so on. Thus there are two possible outcomes from a

1
We choose the use the term “media environment” to represent the collection of media
available and their interactions. This is essentially the setting in which individuals make
choices about their media use. Others use the terms “media ecosystem” or “media ecology”
which emphasize the interrelated nature and importance of interactions among media in a
system. For our purposes, we see these terms as roughly interchangeable with “media
environment.” Each term aims to capture the environment which individuals find themselves
in, we select one for consistency.

3
diverse media environment. Individuals may be exposed to information and

perspectives which are also diverse or they may select varied media in a way that

produces the echo chamber effect. To date evidence has been conflicting. Examinations

of selective exposure have shown that individuals do tend to expose themselves to

information and ideas they agree with more often (Lawrence, Sides, & Farrell, 2010;

Iyengar and Hahn 2009) but they do not tend to avoid information and ideas which are

conflicting (Garrett, 2009). Even among partisans in the US, the media diet of

Republicans and Democrats is in fact quite similar (Weeks, Ksiazek & Holbert, 2016).

While some have found evidence of echo chambers on Twitter (Conover et al., 2011;

Barberá et al., 2015; Himelboim, McCreery & Smith, 2013), others have shown that the

trend does not persist on Facebook (Bakshy et al., 2015; Goel et al., 2010).

Beyond conflicting evidence, there are two key methodological issues with how

echo chamber work has been conducted. First, many studies are single platform and this

severely limits their generalizability. Even if Twitter is polarized (e.g. Conover et al.

2010), it is only one part of a much larger media environment. Individuals tend to use

multiple media to access news and political information (Newman et al., 2017; Dutton

et al., 2017; Ahlers, 2006) and the characteristics of Twitter or any other single medium

may not give us useful information about how political information flows across offline

media or other online media. It is important to consider the entire range of media

individuals use in this high-choice media environment.

Second, measurement of echo chambers has been inconsistent and insufficient

for the complex ways individuals can actually use the assortment of media they have

access to. Measuring exposure to conflicting ideas on a single platform or medium does

not account for the ways in which individuals collect information across the entire

media environment. For example, someone might learn about an issue on Facebook

4
which they fact-check using search. We argue that to understand whether a person is in

an echo chamber it is important to consider how they interact with their entire media

environment. Incorporating more than one measure also helps respond to the known

problem that individuals tend to over-estimate how often they see conflicting views in

their political information seeking practices (Prior, 2009).

In order to understand echo chamber effects in a high-choice media environment

we draw on a nationally representative survey of adults in the UK. We examine self-

reported political interest and diversity of media across many different channels of

political information. The following section reviews past work related to selective

exposure and echo chambers before reviewing our key independent variables: media

diversity and political interest, and dependent variables: acts individuals take which

prevent/avoid being caught in echo chambers. We then review our survey methodology.

Next, we analyse the effect of political interest and media diversity on echo chambers

using multiple regression analysis. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of

considering the entire media environment when assessing the news and political

information seeking practices of individuals.

Background
The Internet and echo chambers
Echo chambers occur when people with the same interests or views interact primarily

within their group. They seek and share information that both conforms to the norms of

their group and tends to reinforce existing beliefs (Jamieson & Cappella, 2008;

Sunstein, 2009). Social psychology has long shown this tendency to associate with like-

minded others is common cross-culturally. However, there is new fear that the current

media system is helping people enter echo chambers more easily than ever before.

5
 Psychological and social psychological research in the 1950s found that people

tend to avoid dissonance and gravitate toward agreement (Festinger, 1957). It is related

to concepts such as groupthink (Janis, 1982) and selective exposure theory (Kapper,

1960). On social media, there are related theories about homophily; the tendency form

social ties with similar others (McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2001).

There are two main ways that the Internet and related technologies might

support the development of echo chambers: allowing individuals to make choices that

reinforce existing preferences and algorithmic filter bubbles. The filter bubble argument

suggests algorithmic filtering which personalizes content presented on social media and

through use of search engines could exacerbate the tendency for people to select media

and content which reinforce their existing preferences (Pariser, 2011). We are primarily

concerned with the choices individuals make in their news and political information

seeking practices in this study rather than the impact of algorithmic filtering.

Reinforcing existing preferences:

In communication and media studies fragmentation and polarization are key features of

audiences which are relevant for discussions of how individuals might reinforce their

existing preferences (Webster, 2005). “Fragmentation describes a process by which the

mass audience, which was once concentrated on three or four viewing options, becomes

more widely distributed” (Webster, 2005, p. 367). Polarization occurs when audiences

diverge and are segmented based on an issue or interest (Sunstein, 2002). In a high-

choice media environment individuals can select media and content from a wide range

of options which means audiences are fragmented and potentially polarized based on

preferences which drive individuals’ choices (Prior, 2007; Sunstein, 2002; Webster

6
2005). More recently the term echo chamber has become a popular description of this

basic mechanism.

There are two concerns about segmentation when it comes to political

information and news. The first is a divide between those who are informed and those

who are not informed about politics. The second is political polarization among those

who exhibit at least minimal political interest or awareness. Since democratic political

systems require people talk to each other to work out compromises and/or to become

informed, the emergence of an echo chamber could have serious negative consequences.

Research into fragmentation, polarization and echo chambers has surfaced

conflicting results. While audiences are fragmented, most individuals continue to rely

on at least some more general sources of news and political information such as non-

partisan newspapers (online and offline) or television broadcasts (Newman et al., 2017;

Weeks, Ksiazek & Holbert, 2016). Furthermore, when selecting media, individuals may

choose to access information that confirms their beliefs more frequently but they are

less likely to actively avoid information that contradicts their views (Garrett, 2009).

Similarly, though there is evidence of polarization in some media, such as

partisan news websites, blogs, and some social media (Conovor et al., 2011; Lawrence,

Sides & Farrell, 2010), these are not the only or even the main sources of news and

political information the general public report relying on (Newman et al., 2017). Even

considering social media, which show the clearest evidence of echo chambers, most

individuals are in fact exposed to a variety of views and sources of political information

(Messing and Westwood, 2014). That said, Bakshy and colleagues consider the case of

Facebook and show that while individuals may be exposed to heterogonous information

they are more likely to click on stories which are in line with their existing views than

those which are in opposition (2015).

7
 One reason past work reports conflicting results is that much echo chamber

research has been focused on only a limited number of social media platforms, often

Twitter. Single-platform studies are problematic because political information and news

is rarely sought from a single platform in a high-choice media environment. There is

also experimental evidence that people put more effort into thinking about information

that comes from multiple sources instead of just one source. People appear to believe

that that information from multiple sources is more likely to be reliable, and thus worth

more serious consideration, than is information that comes from only one source

(Harkins & Petty, 1987).

To date, evidence-based studies of echo chambers have mostly been based on

studies of political polarization in social media, especially Twitter (e.g. Adamic &

Glance, 2005; Himelboim, McCreery & Smith, 2013). A typical paper is Conover et al.

(2011), which applies network methods to data from the USA to show that Democrats’

and Republicans’ Twitter networks are mostly separate.

However, Twitter itself is used by a relatively small proportion of the

population, about one-quarter of the UK, which is younger, wealthier and better-

educated than Britain as a whole (Blank, 2017). It is an influential segment, but it is not

representative of the British population or British voters. Furthermore, social media is

consistently the least trusted medium in cross-national studies (e.g. Dutton et al. 2017).

Ultimately, there is little agreement about the extent to which echo chambers

form, whether they persist across media, and what their democratic impact is.

Media diets in a high-choice environment

In the current media environment individuals may access political information through a

wide variety of channels such as via television, radio, social media, search, online news

sites, and face-to-face communication to name a few (Van Aelst et al., 2017). They may

8
choose to combine these media or use them singularly. These media are diverse and at

times overlapping.

Importantly, individuals consume news and political information in a patterned

way. Individuals tend to develop media habits which are repeated media consumption

behaviours (LaRose, 2010) and news or political information media repertoires which

is the collection of media an individual uses to access news and political information

regularly (Heeter, 1985; Wolfsfeld et al., 2016). Research has convincingly argued that,

given multiple media to choose from individuals tend to habitually make use of a

smaller subset of media available (Heeter, 1985; Wolfsfeld et al., 2016). These

repertoires differ in terms of how many media are included, which media, and how

those media might be combined. We call the regular, daily set of media individuals use

their media diet.

Individuals tend to use multiple media to access news and political information

(Newman et al., 2017; Dutton et al., 2017). For example, just 2% of individuals in the

US rely only on social media for news (Newman et al., 2017). Furthermore, social

media, search engines and news aggregators are becoming increasingly popular as a

way to access news cross-nationally with 65% of the cross-national sample in the

Reuters Digital News (2017) survey reporting a preference for accessing news brands

indirectly. That said, going directly to a news source such as the BBC remains more

common in the UK (Newman et al., 2017).

Notably, not all media are used in the same way or provide the same type of

political information. For example, Nikolov and colleagues show that social media

provide a narrower array of political content than search engines (2015). Indeed, a news

consumer has no control over what a television news program displays in contrast to

their own Twitter feed which they can curate at a granular level. Similarly, newspapers

9
are often broad in topical scope while personalized and niche content is more readily

available via various social media sites and online news aggregators.

The media individuals select is often related to their political engagement and

their partisan preferences. Stroud shows that the media individuals choose to

incorporate into their media diets can be predicted by their partisan pre-dispositions

(2007). Similarly, in a survey of Americans, television and magazine news consumption

were found to be strongly related to increased civic participation while Internet-based

news consumption was not (Ksiazek et al., 2010). Although Ksiazek et al. (2010) treat

the Internet as a single monolithic medium, others have since attempted to tease out

differences across Internet enabled media. Scholars have commonly compared social to

traditional media, acknowledging that traditional media may be accessed via websites.

Social media, search engines and online newspapers each play a potentially varied and

important role. A core problem with this line of research is that most studies select only

one or a few media to focus on and so the comparative utility or effects of use of media

in a diverse media environment are unclear.

Relatedly, some media are valued and/or trusted more than others. For example,

interviews with Canadians who actively discuss politics on Twitter showed that these

individuals rely on mainstream news media and face-to-face conversations with friends

when seeking information about a political issue they think is important instead of posts

on Twitter and Facebook, despite themselves contributing posts online (Dubois, 2015).

Cross-national surveys also suggest people tend to trust social media less than other

sources for news (Dutton et al., 2017; Newman et al., 2017).

By examining the media diets of citizens we can gain a better understanding of

how the many media in a high-choice media environment are integrated into daily life.

We use the diversity of media as a main independent variable. In fact, educational

10
media literacy campaigns often suggest that relying on more than one medium is an

important way individuals can avoid echo chambers. This mechanism has been implied

in much work on media literacy yet has not been clearly tested. We do this as we

consider how different media are used in conjunction with one another, such as fact

checking, in order to establish a more nuanced set of measures for identifying when

individuals are caught in an echo chamber or not. These and other variables are

described below.

Media diversity

Media repertoires can differ in terms of how many media are included, which media,

and how those media might be combined. Media diversity, a key independent variable

in this study, is concerned with the number of media in a persons’ repertoire. The

greater the number of media a citizen uses the more the opportunity to be exposed to

differing political opinions and news. Citizens could exist within a cross-platform echo

chamber, however, this is unlikely for several reasons.

First, even individuals who have strong partisan affiliation report using both

general news sites which are largely non-partisan and include a variety of issues as well

as niche news sites which may be partisan or focused on specific issues – Republicans

and Democrats have media diets which are quite similar (Weeks, Ksiazek & Holbert,

2016). Second, it is possible to be incidentally exposed to political information and

news whether you are interested in it or not (Wojcieszak & Mutz, 2009). Third, not all

media are used in the same way and for the same content which means that as media

diversity increases, there is also an increase in the diversity of content. While one might

receive primarily left-leaning political content on Twitter, they may be incidentally

exposed to a right-leaning perspective from a family member on Facebook or they

11
might hear a debate between representatives from various perspectives on a television

news broadcast.

This leads us to propose our first hypothesis,

H1: The more diverse media that individuals are exposed to, the less likely they are to

be in an echo chamber

Political interest
Political interest is associated with higher than average news and political information

consumption (Boulianne, 2011). Strömbäck and colleagues show that news polarization

in Sweden is increasing over time and that political interest is a key driver for news

consumption (2013). Others note that as news consumption increases so do the number

of media an individual incorporates into their diets (Ksiazek et al., 2010; Yuan, 2011).

As Prior argues, political “junkies” are likely to consume a lot of information and

therefore may encounter more perspectives and arguments (2007).

Importantly, individuals are less likely to avoid conflicting opinions and

information when they see value in being exposed to those ideas (Knobloch-Westerwick

and Kleinman 2012; Valentino et al. 2009). People who are politically interested often

want to understand political situations in detail and understand alternative perspectives.

For these people, there is value and relevance in avoiding echo chamber.

This leads us to our second hypothesis:

H2: The higher a person’s level of political interest the less likely they are to be in an

echo chamber

Interacting in the environment in ways that avoid echo chambers

In studies of echo chambers the dependant variable is commonly conceptualized as

whether or not people are exposed to contrasting views from their own.

12
 This is problematic because people have a hard time recalling when they have

been exposed to different ideas and so survey research is potentially flawed (Prior

2009). Trace data approaches have emerged as a response to this self-report bias

problem but are also limited because it is hard to measure the type of information and/or

partisan leaning of content accessed across platforms (Wesler et al., 2008). As such,

single platform studies are common. But, being presented with confirmatory opinions

on one platform does not mean other platforms are not used by individuals to help them

avoid being caught in an echo chamber. While our study is limited by self-report we

work to address these concerns. We consider the wide variety of media accessible to

citizens. We also conceptualize our dependent variables in terms of not only what

information people are exposed to but whether or not they take acts to avoid echo

chambers. By using five proxy variables we are able to offer multiple perspectives on

whether a respondent is in an echo chamber. If they agree we can have higher

confidence in our findings.

The data

We use data from the Quello Search Project, a study of media use and politics collected

in January 2017 in the United Kingdom. The 2,000 cases are a random sample of the

online population of Britain, including England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Post-stratification weights are used to re-weight them to census proportions for age,

gender and region. The data collection was funded by Google, although Google has had

no access to this paper prior to publication.

Variables and Measurement

As control variables we include six demographic variables: age, gender, marital status,

education, income, and lifestage. As additional controls we use a left-right political

13
position variable and a self-report of skill using the Internet. Political interest is

measured by an item asking “How interested are you in politics?” Responses were

measured on a 4-category Likert scale from “No interest at all” to “very interested”.

Media diversity was measured with two variables. First, the questionnaire asked “When

looking for information about POLITICAL news, issues or elected officials, how often

do you go to…” Responses were measured on a 5-category Likert scale from “Never”

to “Very often”. This item was used for 12 media, 6 online and 6 offline. The 12 items

were formed into a scale by summing the responses, yielding a range from 0-48. We

tried separating online and offline media use, but they are highly correlated and they

cause collinearity problems in the models reported below. Since we could not put them

both in the same model we only use the combined measure of total media diversity.

Second, since social media are an important source of political news, particularly for

certain groups, we measured it separately. Our measure of social media use is a count of

the number of sites on which a respondent has a profile, so the variable ranges from 0 to

12. There is a relationship between political interest and media diversity but the pearson

product moment correlation is relatively small, about 0.43, and it does not cause

collinearity problems.

We used five different dependent variables, each of which measures different

aspects of an echo chamber. Each variable measures the extent to which people are

exposed to different opinions, i.e. the extent to which respondents find themselves in an

echo chamber. All are based on five-category Likert scales, so they measure the extent

to which a respondent reports being in an echo chamber. For the first three items the

stub was “When looking for news or political information, how often, if ever, do

you…” Each of the following four items follow that stub and are used ad dependent

variables. They are

14
 1. “Read something you DISAGREE with?” (which we call ‘Disagree’);

2. “Check a news source that’s different from what you normally read?” (which we
call ‘Different’);

3. “Try to confirm political information you found by searching online for another
source?” (which we call ‘Confirm’).

4. “Try to confirm political information by checking a major offline news

medium?” (which we call ‘Offline’)

The fifth dependent variable, which we call ‘Changed’, is about opinion change:

5. “Thinking about recent searches you have done online using a search engine.
How often have you discovered something that CHANGED your opinion on a
political issue?”.

All dependent variables are coded so that lower values mean the respondent is

more likely to be in an echo chamber. This coding implies that, in the regressions,

negative coefficients of the independent variables mean a respondent is more likely to

be in an echo chamber; positive coefficients mean they are less likely.

These variables complement each other in several ways. The variable Disagree

measures how often respondents encounter contrary opinions or information. This is

closest to the standard measures of being in an echo chamber used in previous work. It

is a passive measure of coming across conflicting information without actively seeking

it. The variable Different measures the extent to which respondents expose themselves

to unfamiliar publications, possibly containing new or different information. The

variables Confirm, Different, Changed and Offline measure the extent to which

respondents have taken action to actively remove themselves from an echo chamber. By

using all five dependent variables, we have a much more comprehensive view of

possible echo chambers than other research. This comprehensive view is directly

responsive to the increasingly complex media habits and repertoires of individuals.

15
 Results

Our five dependent variables have reasonable distributions (see Figure 1), largely

symmetric and well-spread across the entire range of possible values. The symmetry is

noteworthy because it indicates the portion of the population who are less likely to be in

an echo chamber. The exact proportions vary across the five variables, but in general

about the same proportion are on the right side of the centre as on the left side.

Figure 1: Distributions of dependent variables

60 60
Percent

40
Percent

40
20
20
0
Almost Rarely Sometimes Mostly Nearly 0
never always Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very often

Disagree: How often do you disagree with Different: How often do you check a political
political content friends post on social media? news source different from usual?

60 60
Percent

Percent

40 40

20 20

0 0
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very often Never Rarely Occasionally Often

Confirm: How often do you use search Changed: How often have you discovered information
to try to confirm political information? that changed your opinion on a political issue?

60
Percent

40

20
0
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very often

Offline: How often do you confirm political

information using an offline source?

Source: Quello Search Project, UK data, N = 2000

To address our main hypotheses, we used hierarchical regression models. First

we entered all of our control variables. In the second step we entered our three variables

measuring political interest and media diversity. Table 1 contains standardized

regression coefficients for the five regressions containing only control variables. The

16
results are fairly consistent across all five dependent variables. Skills and political

participation are always significant. Age is significant and (as expected) negative for

three variables. Gender, marital status, lifestage and right-left political orientation are

each significant only once. Income and education are not significant. The R²s range

from 11% to 23%. We lose over 500 cases because of missing data. This is due mostly

to the income and right-left politics variables, where there are a large number of people

who did not respond (about 350 respondents). Because of the missing data, we remove

income and right-left politics from the remaining regressions. Including them does not

change substantive results or interpretations of the remaining regressions.

Table 1. Control variables only

Disagree Different Confirm Change Offline
Age -0.02 -0.14*** -0.20*** -0.20*** -0.07
Gender 0.06* -0.02 0.03 -0.04 0.04
Marital status
Married -0.02 0.01 0.01 0.03 -0.02
Living w partner -0.02 -0.01 -0.01 -0.03 -0.05
Divorce/separated 0.03 -0.02 -0.04 -0.06* -0.07*
Widowed -0.02 -0.02 0.00 0.00 -0.05
Lifestage
Employed 0.14 0.15* 0.1 0.03 0.15*
Retired 0.14 0.07 0.08 0.01 0.14*
Unemployed 0.09 0.04 0.04 0.00 0.10*
Education level 0.00 -0.01 0.03 -0.01 0.04
Income 0.05 0.00 -0.03 0.00 0.00
Right-left politics 0.04 0.06* 0.03 0.04 0.05
Skills 0.13*** 0.19*** 0.22*** 0.14*** 0.19***
Political participation 0.27*** 0.29*** 0.26*** 0.25*** 0.24***
N 1454 1448 1458 1434 1461
Adjusted R² 0.11 0.23 0.22 0.19 0.14
Notes: * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001; OLS regressions presenting standardized
beta coefficients; Omitted categories are single and student.

Table 2 adds the variables measuring media diversity and political interest.

These new variables change the results considerably. First, the R²s generally double in

size, increasing by between 12 and 22 percentage points. Second, both skills and

political participation become less significant and weaker. They are not significant at all

17
in the Change regression. Age also becomes weaker and it is no longer significant in the

Different regression.

The media diversity variables have strong effects. They are always significant.

Media diversity is particularly noteworthy because it has by far the strongest effects. It

is between two and six times stronger than the second strongest variable in the model.

Since the media diversity variables are always positive, respondents who have more

diverse media habits are less likely to be in an echo chamber. This confirms hypothesis

1.

Political interest is significant for four of the five dependent variables, only for

Change is it not significant. It is stronger than social media diversity in the Disagree,

Confirm and Offline models. Since it is positive, respondents who are more interested in

politics are less likely to be in an echo chamber. This confirms hypothesis 2.

Table 2. Adding political interest and media diversity

Disagree Different Confirm Change Offline
Age 0.04 -0.03 -0.09* -0.09* 0.04
Gender 0.04 -0.02 0.02 -0.02 0.04
Marital status
Married -0.02 0.01 0.01 0.01 -0.02
Living w partner -0.02 -0.01 0.01 -0.02 -0.02
Divorce/separated 0.01 -0.01 -0.02 -0.05* -0.05
Widowed -0.01 -0.01 0.01 -0.01 -0.04
Lifestage
Employed 0.02 0.01 -0.05 -0.07 -0.02
Retired 0.03 -0.05 -0.06 -0.08 -0.02
Unemployed 0.03 0.02 -0.02 -0.05 0.03
Education level 0.02 0.01 0.03 0.01 0.05*
Skills 0.05* 0.08*** 0.10*** 0.03 0.07***
Political participation 0.09** 0.07** 0.05* 0.04 0.01
Political interest 0.15*** 0.05* 0.10*** 0.04 0.13***
Media diversity 0.31*** 0.50*** 0.41*** 0.44*** 0.47***
Social media diversity 0.08** 0.07** 0.11*** 0.08** 0.08**
N 1793 1797 1801 1752 1806
Adjusted R² 0.23 0.44 0.40 0.34 0.36
Notes: * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001; OLS regressions presenting
standardized beta coefficients; Omitted categories are single and student.

18
 These results raise two possibilities. First, that respondents with no political

interest are in an echo chamber. We examine this possibility using the regressions in

Table 3. The results in this table are based only on the respondents who said they had

‘No interest at all’ in politics, N = 243. With so few cases, the results are not very

stable, but they follow the same broad pattern that we have seen in prior regressions.

Social media diversity is no longer significant but media diversity remains positive,

significant and strong, so even respondents with no political interest are less likely to be

in an echo chamber when they have diverse media habits. Because of this strong

variable, the R²s remain high.

Table 3. Respondents with ‘no interest at all’ in politics

Disagree Different Confirm Change Offline
Age -0.11 -0.27** -0.21* -0.19* -0.15
Gender -0.01 -0.07 -0.03 -0.10 -0.06
Marital status
Married 0.04 -0.03 0.02 0.20* -0/05
Living w partner 0.06 -0.05 0.03 0.15 0.07
Divorce/separated -0.09 -0.01 -0.02 0.00 -0.05
Widowed 0.09 0.03 0.11 0.06 0.10
Lifestage
Employed 0.15 0.21 0.24 -0.08 0.25
Retired 0.26 0.17 0.09 0.04 0.12
Unemployed 0.11 0.18 0.24 -0.11 0.22
Education level 0.09 0.09 0.08 0.02 0.05
Skills -0.02 -0.02 -0.09 0.07 -0.78
Political participation 0.16* 0.12 0.12 0.00 0.10
Media diversity 0.37*** 0.49*** 0.42*** 0.41*** 0.51***
Social media diversity 0.03 0.01 0.09 0.09 -0.02
N 197 203 202 186 203
Adjusted R² 0.29 0.45 0.42 0.35 0.40
Notes: * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001; OLS regressions presenting standardized
beta coefficients; Omitted categories are single and student.

The second question is whether these relationships continue to hold for

respondents at the ends of the political spectrum. In other words, it may be that these

relationships hold for people who are in the political middle, but that respondents who

are on the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum are more likely to

19
be in an echo chamber. We repeated these regressions separately (1) for respondents

who said they were fairly or very right wing (N = 273) and (2) for respondents who said

they were fairly or very left wing (N = 393). We do not show these two tables of

regression results because they duplicate the results in Tables 1-3. On both ends of the

political spectrum, political interest, media diversity and social media diversity remain

strong, generally significant and positive. Media diversity is always significant and

always the strongest coefficient in all models. In short, hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2

continue to be confirmed no matter how we slice the data.

Discussion
The main point that comes out of these regressions is that, regardless of how we

measure the presence of an echo chamber, greater interest in politics and more media

diversity reduces the likelihood of being in an echo chamber. These results are strong

and consistent and this confirms both hypotheses.

It is evident that media diets and choices matter when it comes to assessing the

threat of potential echo chambers. Supporting our first hypothesis, we have shown that

the number of media an individual chooses to incorporate into their habits is related to

their likelihood of becoming caught in an echo chamber. Having a diverse media diet is

a step toward exposure to diverse information and perspectives. Individuals may expose

themselves to these viewpoints in a range of ways, from passively encountering

information they disagree with, to actively checking multiple sources or using other

media to verify information. In each case we have found that media diversity predicts

acts which help the individual avoid an echo chamber. Supporting our second

hypothesis, we have shown that greater interest in politics also reduces the likelihood of

being caught in an echo chamber.

20
 Whatever may be happening on any single social media platform, when we look at

the entire media environment there is little apparent echo chamber. People regularly

encounter things that they disagree with. People check multiple sources. People try to

confirm information using search. Possibly most important, people discover things that

change their political opinions. Looking at the entire multi-media environment we find

little evidence of an echo chamber. This applies even to people who are not interested in

politics. Thus, the possibility of being in an echo chamber seems overstated. Of course,

there are a small number of individuals with both very low interest in politics and low

media diversity for whom being stuck in an echo chamber is more likely. We discuss

this segment of the population below but we first review theoretical and methodological

implications of our findings.

Echo chamber theory in a high-choice media environment

Past work on echo chambers, selective exposure to news and political information, and

political polarization narrowly define and measure likelihood of being in an echo

chamber. These studies focus on exposure to different ideas whether it be through a

self-report survey or through analysis of trace data from a social media platform such as

Twitter. In line with this work, we have included exposure to different ideas as a

dependent variable but we push beyond this narrow conceptualization and

operationalization of the term.

A high-choice media environment does not simply mean that individuals

develop strategies to deal with the many media options available, though of course they

do so as they develop their news and political information repertoires (Webster &

Ksiazek, 2012). People also develop strategies for making use of different media, often

in complementary ways (e.g. checking a story using a different media). Consequently,

focusing only on whether or not someone is exposed to differing views is a flawed

21
approach because it does not consider the nuanced and possibly strategic use of multiple

media in a high-choice environment. Exposure to different ideas is one proxy for

likelihood of being caught in an echo chamber but so too are acts individuals take which

can, intentionally or otherwise, help them avoid echo chambers. We consider the acts

individuals can take to avoid echo chambers as they choose which media to use and

how to use them in a high-choice media environment. We use these acts as a proxy for

likelihood of being caught in an echo chamber. This is because news and political

information seeking are a complex set of communication practices which should be

studied across-platforms (Garrett et al., 2012) and a simple measure of exposure,

particularly when few or even one media source is considered or recalled, cannot

capture the notion of an echo chamber.

Future work on echo chambers should consider the various types of choices

individuals can make in this high-choice media environment including the diversity of

media they make use of and the consequences of that diverse use in terms of how and

when different media are combined. Future studies might draw on the idea of dual-

screening (Vaccari, Chadwick & O’Loughlin, 2015), individuals’ fact-checking

practices, and other ways in which individuals use media in complementary ways as

they seek out news and political information.

Measuring echo chambers in a high-choice environment

Most individuals make use of multiple media in their news and political information

seeking practices which means that single platform studies are insufficient for assessing

the threats of echo chambers in the context of a high-choice media environment. The

risk of echo chambers is that they divide society into groups of people who are informed

and people who are not and/or across partisan lines. This societal threat can only be

assessed if the multiple media individuals often rely on are considered together.

22
 It seems likely that networks on Twitter are polarized, as Conover and

colleagues’ results show (2011) and networks on other social media may be equally

polarized. But social media are only part of the environment, and they are the least

trusted part. Political information can be sourced through many media channels,

including political websites, websites of offline magazines and newspapers, offline print

media, and above all television. Twitter may be a place where individuals talk to people

with the same political opinions. But a study of Twitter says little about the political

information one is exposed to when they watch CNN or BBC news, or visit the

Economist website or the Washington Post. These are places where individuals may be

exposed to a wider variety of information and political views. This suggests that future

research could profitably focus on the complex ways that people interact with all forms

of online and offline media.

Those who are likely caught in an echo chamber

Our results suggest that people who are both not politically interested and who do not

use diverse media are more likely to be in an echo chamber. They are less likely check

multiple sources or to discover things that change their minds. This is an argument that

an echo chamber exists, but for a subset of the population. While it is concerning that

some individuals are likely to be caught in an echo chamber it is worth noting that this

segment of the population is quite small. In our data 148 respondents, about 8%, have

media diversity scores of 10 or less (out of a possible maximum of 48) and also say they

are not interested in politics.

Furthermore, though this 8% of the population may be more likely to be caught

in an echo chamber they may also benefit from friends and family who have more

diverse media diets and who are interested in politics. Katz and Lazarsfeld famously

identified the opinion leader who is found in every social stratum and who is an above

23
average consumer of news media (1955). The opinion leader shares political

information and opinions with their everyday associates who are normally less

interested in politics and who normally consume less news. Their opinion is one that

people who are less interested in politics may listen to and heed. Though we cannot test

this idea in the present study, this could be a way that people who are less interested in

politics escape an echo chamber. Notably, there is an outstanding research question as

to what opinion leaders choose to share, with whom, and in what contexts.

Finally, this evidence that an echo chamber may exist for a portion of the

population does suggest that increased media literacy can help people learn to avoid

echo chambers. Within media literacy campaigns it is common to suggest that

individuals should not rely solely on social media. These claims are correct; people with

greater media diversity do better at avoiding echo chambers. This presents an

opportunity for future work to examine the kinds of media choices that are most

effective which can in turn inform policy and educational campaigns. This work would

serve efforts at increasing media literacy and shed light on ways we might combat echo

chambers that exist for the relatively small proportion of individuals who are neither

interested in politics nor use a diversity of sources currently.

Broader implications
This study has two broader implications. First, the definition and measurement of being

in an echo chamber has so far been overly narrow. This narrowness is a potential

challenge for other examinations of political communication theories. Second, single

medium studies are not useful to generalize to the broader media environment. Both

relate to the fact that, despite touting the potential of the Internet to expand media and

communication possibilities, researchers often overlook this complexity when it comes

24
of understanding the political communication practices of individuals and the

implications of those practices.

Indeed, even the conceptualization of an echo chamber is rooted in an

assessment of an Internet-enabled, high-choice media environment which affords

individuals the opportunity to choose among a variety of media in order to serve their

own needs and preferences. Yet, empirical work has too often used overly narrow

definitions of being caught in an echo chamber which do not actually encompass the

choices individuals can make. We need to consider factors such as what and how many

media people choose, how they choose to use them, whether this use is overlapping and

complimentary, etc. The likelihood of being caught in an echo chamber should be

assessed by more than a single-self report of exposure to different ideas or trace data

from a single platform. Instead we need to take a multi-perspective approach which

considers the ways individuals actually use media in this high-choice environment.

Similarly, studies of a single medium, especially popular studies of a single

social network site, are of limited value. Consider that in our data young respondents

age 18-34 say they have accounts on an average of five social media. Studying one of

those five social networking sites, no matter how large the dataset, remains a single case

study. Though valuable for other purposes, they do not help us understand the other four

social media, nor does it help us understand how they consume other online and offline

media. The value of studies of a single medium is waning. Unless we have a special

theoretical justification, we should stop doing them.

As researchers, we sometimes do not act as if we believe that the Internet and

related technologies have expanded communication possibilities in a meaningful way. If

we believed it we would study individuals and their choices in this environment in all its

multiple media glory.

25
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